iStabilizer Flex tripod review:
There are some great camera apps out there, and some of them require a tripod. This is the tripod I settled on, and so I asked for it as a Christmas gift.
| An iPhone 4 in a case will fit in this tripod.
The legs are covered with soft foam and are flexible, but I can't see whether there are joints under the foam or if the flexibility is due to bendable metal. If the latter is the case, then I predict that the legs will break after bending them enough times (like bending a paperclip). |
| The mechanism that holds on to the smartphone is a spring loaded clamp.
It looks like it could accommodate a device that's almost twice as thick as the iPhone 4. |
| The contact at the bottom of the clamp is about 1.75 inches wide and made of spongy material. |
| The contact at the top of the clamp is about 0.25 inches wide and made of rubbery material. Since it's so narrow, and the clamping force is quite high, this makes me think that it's going to wear off the coating on my iPhone's case.
The little rubber handle you're supposed to use when mounting your smartphone feels like it could be unintentionally ripped off, considering the amount of force necessary to open it. So, instead of using the handle, I push it open with the smartphone itself, and then twist the smartphone into place.
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| The main joint is a ball and socket joint, and its resistance is adjustable. I think that this joint is the best feature of this tripod. |
| There's also a notch in the socket, to get more extreme angles. |
| The bottom part can be unscrewed and attached to my ancient Sony CyberShot camera. |
| The screw that attaches to the camera is probably a standard tripod screw. So it should be possible to use the top part (the clamp) to attach a smartphone to other tripods that have the same screw.
The screw looks like it's made out of plastic, so it may be fragile. |
What concerns me the most about this tripod is the high clamping force that it exerts on an iPhone + case. Other than that, it works well. It's very light so it's very portable. Also, it will fit more than one kind of smartphone, so it probably won't be obsolete after upgrading to a different phone. I think this tripod is a decent option for smartphone photography enthusiasts.